Sunday, February 27, 2011

Short bookreview - ACM: Mastering the unpredictable

Being very involved in the area of Adaptive Case Management at Capgemini, I am reading everything I find on the subject.

I recently finished "Mastering the unpredictable" - How Adaptive Case Management will revolutionize the way knowledge workers get things done. http://mtubook.wordpress.com/

A short review:

Pro's:

- Gives various, sometime overlapping, views on the subject of ACM

- Has some very clear viewpoints on the functionality and end-user perspective

Cons:

- No details on hard business cases - how can ACM actually be of real value to a business, besides the "improve productivity and increase transparency" promise?

- No information on approach. A lot of complaints about the traditional process-design methods, not suitable for knowledge work analysis, but no answers or a method on how to actually design a case management solution for a domain: how to deal with the complex set of rules, activities, data, functionality, input/output, events, etc.

My conclusions: I was expecting more - am disappointed. Due to the overlap between the articles, no article really seem to go in depth towards practical implementation issues, business cases and tested approaches. Basically a lot of articles, each defining ACM and exploring some of the functional aspects. Good as an, somewhat lengthy, basic introduction to the subject (but much of that info can be found on the net as well...)

I won't enter the discussion of ACM being part of BPM or not. Well, a little bit: ACM is about activity, collaboration, transparency... If we restrict the "P" in BPM to Taylorian strict procedural processes, ACM would not be a part. But for me the P stands for productive people delivering results trough coordinated activities, making ACM part of BPM.

Maybe we should relabel BPM to BCM "Business Collaboration Management" or Business Value Delivery Management: the discipline of helping people to work together and deliver value....